blog locks up for 2 to 3 minutes - first time only, IE only

When I visit http://internationalisationprocess.wordpress.com/ using IE 8, it locks up explorer for about 2 to 3 minutes. Completely freezes it. CPU goes through the roof. But only the first time. After that, it's fine, unless I start a new instance of Explorer. Then that will then display the same lockup behaviour, once.

Have tried on a different PC, with a different service provider, same result. Firefox is OK. IE used to be OK - the blog was created with it.

The site is using Coraline and the banner chosen is one of the standard ones. Although this is odd - when I try to set my own blog to display that image, it isn't one of the options? The banner image does display before the lockup happens, suggesting that it isn't what the wait is for. There are no non-standard images on the page.

Firebug reports one error on the page - Gravatar is not defined. But I don't think that's new, and this all used to work.